REFLECTIONS ON SOCIETY’S HEROES
I dislike “meta” articles. You know, where a writer writes about writing. That’s usually more interesting to the writer than the reader! But after turning out a lot of these essays on heroism — more than 70 of them anyway — perhaps you would let me get away with just one talking about what this has been like.
I’m hoping that by talking about writing about heroism, I will also pass along to you some new insight into the nature of heroism itself.
First, there is no point writing about how wonderful our heroes and their rescues are. You know that as well as I do, and that sentiment is nearly universal. You don’t need me to bring you that news.
It has been more interesting to write about why we find heroes and heroism so appealing. Is there something beyond the sheer awesomeness of it all? Maybe we have a selfish interest. It would be handy to have a hero nearby to help us out if we ever personally find ourselves in peril. I don’t think that is it, though. It makes some logical sense, but in hundreds of conversations about our heroes I’ve never heard someone hint at something like that.
No, I think there is something deeper in our admiration for Carnegie heroes. They show us something about how our society ought to work when it’s at its very best.
Our society is roughly organized along the lines of free-market capitalism, the idea that when individuals pursue their personal economic interests by lawful means they produce the best overall good for society. I am an ardent supporter of that philosophy, but I also readily see that the individual altruism of Carnegie heroes makes our society stronger and somehow richer.
When I say “individual altruism” I mean acts where one citizen subordinates his or her personal well-being to benefit another — often a complete stranger.
This seems to be the exact opposite of free-market capitalism, where each of us pursues our private economic interest, but in real life they seem to work well together.
This may be because they are talking about different domains of our lives. It may help that both approaches are rooted in the ability of an individual to make decisions for themselves. To earn the Carnegie Medal, a rescuer must be acting free of any obligation or self-interest.
You could say that the Carnegie Medal honors not the rescue itself, but the hero’s decision to attempt the rescue.
Make of this what you will, but we all seem delighted to live in a world where there are heroes ready to act. Some day we might be the victim in need of a rescue, some day we may even have the opportunity to be one of those heroes.
That’s not very likely, thankfully, but we can nevertheless be cheered and uplifted by the tales of the Carnegie heroes throughout North America. Maybe this is just a way of saying that we love the sheer awesome wonderfulness of what these heroes do. That’s good enough for me, and more than enough to keep me writing!